


such-like i love

by Askance, octopifer



Category: The Sisters Brothers (2018)
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Time, M/M, Missing Scenes, Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-14
Updated: 2019-02-14
Packaged: 2019-10-28 17:58:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,958
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17792087
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Askance/pseuds/Askance, https://archiveofourown.org/users/octopifer/pseuds/octopifer
Summary: With his hand flat against the plane of Morris’ chest Warm can picture, like a burning coal suspended inside him, that soft and natural kinship he had imagined they shared from the beginning. There is nothing dramatic in it, nothing wild or of-the-moment. It is as if they had always meant to meet, and had simply forgotten it for a while.





	such-like i love

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Valentine's Day from these two silly happy lovebirds, and from me, and from [Tania](https://twitter.com/nobledemonsxo), who has graced us with more art <3
> 
> Title from "I Sing the Body Electric," by Walt Whitman.

 I.

They are two days from Jacksonville, and there is a change beginning in Morris.

              Warm cannot put his finger on it—only knows that it is concerning. Certainly Morris still indulges in conversation with him, asks curious questions and makes him laugh; they eat together in the safety of the circled wagon train, by firelight; they sleep under a stretched-out canvas at a respectful distance from one another, as they have since Wolf Creek. There is nothing particularly tense between them, Warm thinks, nothing that has happened, that can account for the shift that he sees, nonetheless, when he catches Morris sometimes looking at him out of the corner of his eye with a faint expression of hurt.

              It is not his place to ask, he thinks, what is troubling his friend. Not so soon in their journey together. He has known all the time that Morris is not being entirely forthcoming with him, but he has respected this about him so far—he, too, has his secrets. So he does not ask, but he does not let it escape his notice, either; he wonders about it, when he cannot sleep, and the stars are wheeling high above their heads at night.

              He wonders what it is about Jacksonville that is pulling down the corners of Morris’ mouth so.

              They are two days from Jacksonville and a newcomer has joined the wagon train, from a homestead far to the west, and he is in great demand, because he has alcohol to sell, and hopes to use the money to go south and strike it rich on the American River. Warm does not usually drink, and Morris will only occasionally have brandy after dinner, and he is therefore a little surprised to see Morris, from across the wagon circle, trading a dollar to the man for a little bottle of shine, the growing bags beneath his eyes plum-dark in the firelight.

              Warm doesn’t mention it, and only casts a long glance in Morris’ direction when, after they have finished their supper on their tin plates, Morris uncorks the bottle and takes a long draught with his eyes closed.

              Warm feels a twinge of uncertainty.

              “Would you like some, Hermann?” Morris says, his voice already a little rounded, without looking at him, and Warm shakes his head.

              “No, thank you.” He pauses. “Are you alright, John?”

              Morris doesn’t answer.

              Warm chases a lone pea around the leftover gravy in his plate with his fork, watching Morris from the corner of his eye.

Another drink—and another.

              “Would you go for a stroll with me?” Morris says, suddenly, standing up. The bottle is nearly halfway empty, and though Warm imagines he must already be quite drunk he is neither stumbling nor slurring his words. Somehow, this isn’t as reassuring to Warm as it might have been. “It’s a good night for it.”

              It _is_ a good night for it. “Of course,” he says, and sets down his plate in the grass.

              A mile to the east there is a ridgeline that plunges down into a long valley through which they crossed earlier in the day, and they wander off in that direction, Morris still holding the bottle of shine and Warm, keeping a steady eye on it, trailing at his side.

              Morris is neither looking at him nor speaking, and from the set of his shoulders and his eyes in the moonlight Warm can tell he is deep in thought. He walks beside him in silence. Their boots make soft noises in the dirt and the grass.

              He hopes everything is alright. He has only known John Morris for a very little while, but he likes him a great deal, and is only ever in the habit of wishing well on people. If Morris would tell him, he thinks, perhaps he could even be of help.

              Around them the night is still. Back the way they came, Warm can still clearly see the camp when he glances over his shoulder, orange light flickering through the taut canvases of the covered wagons, shadows of men and women moving like spirits or dreams. In the distance, vague clumps of scrub brush dotting the plain; another campfire, very far away, like the speck of a star; beside him, Morris, looking at the ground, fidgeting with the cork of the bottle of shine. Warm can hear the soft cacaphony of crickets, somewhere. The moon is very bright.

              When they reach the ridgeline Morris sits down, heavily, his legs straight out in front of him, and looks off east without speaking.

              For a moment, Warm stands behind him.

              “John?”

              “Hm.”

              “Is something the matter?”

              Morris twists to look at him. “No,” he says, and Warm thinks he detects the very slightest hint of panic in his tone. “Nothing is the matter. Will you sit and talk with me?”

              Warm obliges, settling down into the dirt beside him, reaching up to loosen the handkerchief tied around his throat. “It’s only that I don’t often see you drink like that.”

              “Oh.” Morris holds up the bottle in two hands and looks at it hard.

              “And—” Warm shifts a little, turning to face him. “Forgive me, John, but you’ve seemed preoccupied.”

              “Have I?”

              Morris is not looking at him.

              “It isn’t my place, but if something is wrong I wish you’d tell me. We’re friends, aren’t we?”

              “Yes,” Morris says, with something like caution, “I like to think that we are.”

              They sit in silence for a while.

              A slow breeze comes through the grass, up the ridge, ruffling the open collar of Warm’s shirt and the long hair at Morris’ temples. Morris is turning the green bottle over and over in his hands, watching the moonlight reflecting on its surface, there and gone again.

              “Are you worried about something in Jacksonville?” Warm asks, eventually. “Your associates?”

              Morris doesn’t respond, but Warm sees his shoulders tightening, take that as a _yes_.

              “Well,” he says, “I’ll be there with you. Whatever it is we can make a go of it together, if that’s any help.”

              Morris closes his eyes, and Warm sees it again—that expression of hurt—cannot reason it, or put a name to it.

Perhaps stupidly, he says, “You’ve helped me so much—I’d like to help you.” He moves a little closer, sideways in the dirt.

              Morris, to his surprise, laughs; it’s a sad laugh, and he looks at Warm with blue eyes bright and drunken.

“You are remarkable, Hermann,” he says.

              “What?”

              “I said you are remarkable.”

              “Oh,” says Warm. He doesn’t know what to make of it.

              “I think I’m lucky to have met you,” says Morris, uncorking his bottle again, downing half of what remains in a single swallow. He grimaces. “I’m sorry.”

              There is a long, fearful strand of anxiety uncoiling in Warm’s chest. “For what?”

              “I’m sorry, is all. Forgive me, Hermann. I’m quite drunk.”

              “That’s all right,” Warm says, with hesitation. “How do you feel?”

              Morris sighs, turns his face into the breeze coming up the ridge. “Better,” he says, “out here away from the smoke.”

              “We can stay here for a while if you’d like.”

              “I would.”

              Morris sets the bottle of shine on the ground between his legs and pulls the hair back from his face, clears his throat and blinks. Warm sits beside him, feeling bewildered and a little afraid, wanting to move a little closer, perhaps—be a solid body against which Morris could lean, if he needed to. If he wanted to.

              To his faint surprise, Morris does exactly that—tilts a little to the right until their shoulders are touching, as if bending in to tell a secret. But he doesn’t speak; he only rests there, the bottle forgotten, the wind toying in his hair.

              Above them, and for miles east, the night sky stretches taut and black, stars scattered across it like salt tipped on a tabletop. Warm can smell the alcohol on Morris, feel his breathing slow and steady. Far away, the lone campfire in the dark goes out.

              Fifteen minutes, perhaps, of that quiet.

              Warm wonders, staring down at the swaying grass beyond their boots, feeling the heavy weight of Morris leaning against him, if now would be the time to broach the subject he has been thinking of for days. He wants Morris to come with him, past Jacksonville, once his work there is finished. He thinks it would be a grand time—prospecting with him, showing him what he’s discovered. If anyone were to be amenable to Warm’s ambitions it would be him—he intuits that—something deep in some inner part of Morris recognizes him, and he it—a kinship, a solidarity. It was apparent to him from the first. It is still there, underneath whatever is worrying him now.

              “Will you tell me,” Warm says softly, “if I can be of use to you in some way, when we get to Jacksonville?”

              Morris leans back a bit, lifts his head. He fixes Warm with his unsteady, hazy eyes, as if gazing at him through thick glass. There is a pinch in his face, at the center, of delirious pain.

              “I only want to help you,” says Warm. He feels as if he is talking to thin air.

              Morris reaches out, and takes Warm’s shoulder with one hand; he leans in, and presses a firm, dry kiss to Warm’s cheek, lingers there a moment, and then gets up, brushing the loose grass and dirt from his trousers, and begins to make his way back to the camp.

* * *

 

 

 

II.

              “You don’t think you’re making a mistake?”

              Warm’s wrists are sore and chafed; he can see a harsh bruising streak along his flesh where the shackles had bitten into his skin. It is harsh and red in the streaming daylight. His face feels tight, exhausted. There is a throb in his skull in the spot where Morris’ fist had connected. He had wept, in the dark, for a little while; he can feel the dry tracks of tears on his face. But Morris, if it is possible, looks much more the worse for wear. His face is drawn and pale, the circles beneath his eyes deeply pronounced, his hair all askew. Warm almost reaches out to help him sit up straight, but he hesitates.

              “I don’t know,” Morris says, his voice still thick with sleep. He makes some vague fluid gesture. “Probably.” He laughs, under his breath.

              The door is six paces away. Warm could make a run for it and quite possibly lose him before Morris had a chance to gather his wits. He looks as if he hasn’t slept in days, and Warm recalls in hazy detail his tossing and turning their final night under the stars, the restless movement of his legs, and the fitful creaking of the bedsprings he had heard from Morris’ room last night.

              Warm glances at the door, and then back to Morris.

              The adrenaline thrum in his chest says _go._ At the same time he feels rooted to the floor. He can’t just run. He needs to know how it is, that he drifted off in chains and woke up free.

              “How is your head?” Morris asks, peering up at him.

              “It hurts,” Warm says, without thinking. There is a wince on Morris’ face.

              “We should go,” he says, getting up with some difficulty.

              They should, but Warm stands there in the middle of the room, watching Morris collect his few belongings—his journal on the night table, his binoculars, placing his hat carefully on his head, picking up his coat and setting it back down. He moves as if he, too, were dazed from a blow to the head. His every movement is deliberate and considered.

              “John?”

              Morris catches his eye in the spotted glass of the mirror.

              “You should get your things, Hermann,” he says.

              He had been going to ask—ask why—what had changed Morris’ mind—but he thinks he knows, or hopes he does, and it seems cruel to make him justify it. He realizes that Morris must have waited all night, sitting quietly in his bed, for Warm to finally doze off as the sun rose, before he crept across the floorboards and unlocked the cuffs. He hadn’t heard him. Hadn’t felt it. On waking he had almost forgotten they had been there at all. Had, for an instant, believed the whole thing to be a bad dream.

              He turns, and goes out the door, to the next room, where his bag is sitting closed-up on a chair. He hadn’t bothered to unpack anything; only his hat is hanging on the bedpost. He picks that up and puts it on his head.

              The afternoon before, he had gone into Morris’ room to call him down to supper in the inn downstairs, and found the room unlocked and empty, but for his bag and his journal laid on the quilt. It had been innocent curiosity. At first he hadn’t truly understood what he was reading, and then it had come over him in waves, like frigid water, and all of it made sense—the lunch in Wolf Creek, the forty-dollar mare with the bad hip,  the questions about San Francisco, the shine and the drunken kiss. He had felt his heart sinking deep into his gut, seen the glint of the shackles, carefully tucked into an inner pocket of the bag that lay open like a yawning mouth on the bed.

              Even then, and even bound in the chair in Morris’ room with the stale taste of his own handkerchief in his mouth, he hadn’t really believed it. It still feels like a tasteless joke.

              Warm stands for a little while in his empty room, his bag on his shoulder, unsure of which to direction to move in next.

              _We should go._ And they should. There is no telling when Morris’ associates will come upon them. They could be downstairs already. Mounting the steps.

              Warm goes back into Morris’ room; he is sitting on the bed, still a little ashen in the face, but looking more awake, and his bag is slung across his shoulder. His coat and hat are on. He looks up when Warm comes in, with a faint and passing surprise, as if he hadn’t expected him to return.

              Warm swallows, looking at him, and Morris meets his gaze shamefaced, like a child expecting discipline.

              “Warm, I—” Morris says, halting. “I have never been a particularly good person.” He sounds low and humiliated, and it seems as if there is more to that thought, but he stops himself—opens his mouth and then closes it again. He looks down at his hands, as if he is waiting for Warm to admonish him, call him terrible names and leave him there alone.

Which, of course, he could never do—Warm knows himself well enough. Already, he thinks, he has forgiven Morris. It’s a funny thing. He had forgiven him long before the shackles came off.

              “I think you demonstrate great goodness,” says Warm.

              “Don’t credit me for doing the right thing.”

              “I’ll do what I like,” Warm says, and he takes a very small pleasure in the look of astonishment that Morris gives him. He hefts his bag higher onto his shoulder. “Are we going?”

              Morris stands up, looking a little bewildered, and Warm holds out his hand, straight and flat, between them.

              Morris looks at it as if it is some foreign creature.

              “Come on, then,” Warm says, nodding toward it. “Let’s start over, shall we?”

              “Warm,” Morris says, with a breathy, incredulous chuckle, but Warm can already see his shoulders relaxing, his face opening, color coming back into it.

              “I think,” says Warm, with conviction, “that you are a good man in difficult circumstances.”

              “Circumstances of my own making.”

              “It’s how we come out of it that matters.” Warm proffers his hand again, a little more firmly this time. “Are we friends then, John? We could be partners, even. Or anything you like. But if we’re to go I’d like us to go together.”

After a moment, Morris takes his hand in his—his fingers are rough, his palm calloused, his grip strong, and he shakes it, a firm, solid thing, and Warm nods approvingly. He smiles, chasing Morris’ eyes, until Morris cracks and smiles back, relieved in some way, his gold tooth glinting in the light coming in through the window. It is so good to see him smile, Warm thinks—for a moment there he’d been afraid he would never see it again.

Warm leans up, and kisses his cheek. When he settles back down on his heels, Morris blinks, as if astounded, his eyelids flickering.

“We have an understanding, I think,” Warm says. He wants it to rest there—doesn’t want to discuss it, pick at it. He knows what Morris had meant, three nights before, with the smell of shine on his breath; Morris knows what he himself means by it now.

“Warm,” Morris begins, but thinks better of it, and says instead, with all gentleness, “Yes. I think we’d better go.”

 

* * *

 

 

              III.

              They are four days out of Jacksonville, and the understanding is unfolding on its own, like a flower gradually finding the sun. It happens without discussion, in a comfortable, slow progression, as if it is walking alongside them, and has always been there.

              When they are sitting together in the evening after a meal, often Morris will doze off with his head resting heavy and placid on Warm’s shoulder; when they have paused in the hot afternoon for a drink and a rest Warm will find Morris’ hand laid unassuming on top of his. They lie closer together now beneath the canvas awning, or under the clear night sky when there is no threat of rain. There is a night on which neither of them sleep, though both are pretending to, and after hours of staring at the rippling, fragmented stars above Warm realizes Morris is still awake, doing the same thing, and nudges him, and they glance at one another and grin.

              And it is comfort, Warm comes to find, the longer it goes on. Talking with Morris is the easiest thing there is. There are ways of seeing the world, and the wilderness especially, Morris tells him, that only come from experiencing, and he is patient when Warm wants to pause and examine a hardy little wildflower, or comment on a birdsong. He looks over his shoulder all the while, scanning the horizon for men on horseback, but he is patient.

              Morris had been good at keeping his secret on the trail from Wolf Creek, but now, unburdened by it, there is a lightness to him that Warm finds incredible. He laughs more easily; his shoulders are not always so bunched up around his ears. Warm even hears him humming, on their fourth night out of Jacksonville, as he is washing off in a divot in the mountainside that is scarcely even a pond. Warm can see his shape in the coming twilight through the bushes. He isn’t familiar with the tune, but he listens. It feels old and anchored. It floats up through the treetops and out of reach.

              Morris, Warm is surprised to learn, likes a great deal to be touched. But of course, when he thinks about it, it makes a kind of sense; Warm can only imagine how starved of contact he must be; in his quiet, increasing stories to him of his past Morris has never mentioned a lover, nor any kind of lingering embrace. Morris is always touching him—he is helping him up a steep crag from which to see the valley down below; he is manipulating Warm’s hand to see all the miniscule mosquito bites that dot it like stars; he is brushing a reckless thumb across Warm’s lower lip after Warm has said something that he finds charming. And Warm, though it takes a while to gather the courage, touches him, too. He finds Morris’ hand and laces his fingers through it and goes on scribbling equations in the morning after breakfast. He runs his fingernails gently along the line of Morris’ arm at night where it rests on his side, watching the fine hairs on his forearm rise to the sensation. He kisses him, in the cool shade of a massive boulder that hangs over the river where they are bathing, five days out of Jacksonville. He kisses Morris’ kind, smiling mouth.

              Quite simply, it feels like the right thing to be doing. It feels like the right thing to do with Morris. Wherever the want comes from, whatever it means, Warm isn’t inclined to care. He has been traveling for so long by himself, and he is so far from home, and Morris—with his hand flat against the plane of Morris’ chest Warm can picture, like a burning coal suspended inside him, that soft and natural kinship he had imagined they shared from the beginning. There is nothing dramatic in it, nothing wild or of-the-moment. It is as if they had always meant to meet, and had simply forgotten it for a while.

              In Wolf Creek, he had asked if they knew one another. He had meant, of course, the house-raising in Myrtle Creek, the feeling of a stranger’s eyes on him from across the street, watching him catch the chicken underneath his hat. Now he wonders, with a sense of how ridiculous and romantic it sounds, if he hadn’t meant something else as well.

              What he wants is plain: he wants to be close to Morris. He wants to be familiar with every inch and angle of his body, every tic and idiom of his speech. He wants to buy a toothbrush so that his breath is as sweet and soft as Morris’ breath is, when it drifts, comes labored against his mouth. He wants to tell him everything about himself. He wants Morris’ opinion on the weather and the work and the future. He wants to be alone in a room and still smell his faint cologne lingering there with him, like a ghost, like dust mites in the sunlight.

 

* * *

 

 

              IV.

              They are bound for a place called Mayfield, and the days are growing increasingly hot. Morris is not pleased by how often they are forced to stop to let Warm’s horse rest, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Warm, for his part, is grateful for the chance to enjoy the scenery—they are going mostly through steep mountain passes, difficult terrain but easier to lose pursuers in. He loves the deep quiet that forms cloud-like up here, the timbrous, frightening noise of pine trees moving in the wind and the scurrying in the underbrush of animals he cannot see.

              They are three days out from Mayfield when, coming down into a valley, Warm’s mare gets a stone stuck in her hoof, and will go no further until it is pulled out. Standing on a rocky outcropping on a hill nearby, Morris sees dark clouds in the distance and says that they may as well set up camp, that it’s going to storm badly, and Warm’s mare needs a chance to relieve her bad hip.

              The stone comes out of her hoof without much trouble, though she snorts and stamps and threatens to kick Warm in the face, and when it’s done he leads her into as much shade as he can find on the near-treeless plain and leaves her contentedly chewing on the dry, brittle grass. In the comparative shelter of the hillside Morris is staking out one of their tents and draping another canvas sheet over it, to protect from the threatening rain, when it comes.

              Now, though, the mid-afternoon is sweltering, and Warm rolls up his sleeves and wanders for a little while, though never out of sight of Morris, looking for something with which to refill their canteen. He finds the remains of a creek that is quickly drying out in the encroaching summer and crouches down beside it for a while, watching the slow trickle of clear water roll into the dark hole of the metal bottle. All around are the endless rustling dronings of grasshoppers and the baffling configurations of swarming gnats. There is a smell of desiccated weeds and parched earth, and he can feel the back of his neck beginning to burn. He could imagine that they two are the only ones who exist in the world.

              When he gets back to their camp, Morris is digging a shallow fire pit, and the tent is set up. They have another, but Morris hopes to leave early in the morning when the rain has passed, and doesn’t want to waste time striking two.

              Warm hands him off the canteen, and Morris gives him a grateful look. His hair is plastered to his face with sweat and his vest is lying in a heap in the dirt near the fire pit, his sleeves rolled up like Warm’s.

              Inside the tent, Morris has been gracious enough to lay out their sugans and Mackinaw blankets, and has set up the little folding table with the lantern on it. The air inside is stifling, but the relief from the sun is enormous, and almost without thinking Warm wrestles off his boots and lies down on his bedroll, holding an arm across his eyes.

              In the dark red space behind his eyelids he can hear the wind outside, feel the faint thump of his pulse in his arm. He is suddenly and unaccountably exhausted; the heat, of course. Coming down from the mountain on which they’d spent the last two nights had been a shock, like stepping foot on burning sand after standing in a river. Up there the early morning hours had been intensely cold, and he had woken to find Morris pressed up against him, clutching greedily at the blankets in his sleep, burrowing into him like a prairie dog into the soil.

              It is hot, but Warm thinks he wouldn’t mind if Morris came in to lie down beside him for a while. It would actually be rather nice. They could rest for a while in the still close air and listen to one another breathe. Or more. They have not yet had the time or the energy to do much more with one another than to lie tangled up at night, their legs and arms like woven threads, or rest naked side by side on their backs with their feet dangling in a cold mountain stream. But the notion of their bodies flush together in this pounding heat, the smell of their sweat between them, Morris’ throaty breath and the wind chattering outside in the tall grass and the very faint headache at the base of Warm’s skull, all of it together seems somehow delightful to him, ordained.

              He rises up on his elbows. Underneath the overhanging canvas the sun, perhaps dampened by the clouds rolling in, is managing to shear a few slices of hot light through the fabric. The open flap of the tent is rippling softly.

              He hears footsteps in the dirt, and then sees the canteen being set down carefully at the entrance to the tent, and realizes that he’s being foolish. Morris, like some vampire, isn’t going to come inside without being asked.

              Warm lies back down and closes his eyes again.

              It takes a long time for the heat of the sun on the canvas to creep away, for the smell of the breeze to turn damp and sour, for a slow darkness to descend overhead, and by the time Morris ducks inside Warm can already hear thunder in the distance and the first few drops of rain hitting the hard-packed earth. He turns his head and Morris smiles at him, running a hand back through his hair.

              “Well-rested?” he says. He sits down heavily on his own bedroll to take off his boots. Warm looks up at the shivering canvas above their heads, listening for the increasing noise of the storm.

              “I had a headache before,” he says, “but it’s gone now. What have you been doing?”

              “Covering up our hardtack and hobbling the horses.”

              “All afternoon?”

              Morris quirks an eyebrow at him. “And making sure we’re not being too closely followed.”

              “Surely we’re well ahead of them.”

              “You don’t know them like I do,” Morris says. He nudges Warm with the toe of his stocking foot and Warm moves over as much as he can, pressed up against the tent wall, and he feels a hot little flower blooming in his stomach when Morris lies down with a long sigh beside him. He runs his hands over his face and blinks hard a few times, as if his eyes are dry. “If they’re in any kind of fighting shape they could be heading down the mountain as we speak.”

              Warm sobers slightly. He lifts up on his elbows again, looking down at Morris, who seems fairly unconcerned; his eyes are closed and his hand is resting on his belly.

              “Can we afford to spend the night here, then?”

              Morris opens one blue eye and looks at him. “I don’t mean to worry you,” he says, a note of placation in his voice. He reaches up and briefly hooks Warm’s left earlobe between his first and middle fingers, and then lets it go. “I haven’t noticed anyone behind us in days. Besides, it would be reckless to take your mare out in the rain.”

              “I suppose.”

              “You’re becoming a crack shot, Hermann.”

              “You’ve said they’re dangerous.”

              “And more than a little stupid.” Morris waves a hand dismissively. “When and if it comes to it, we will deal with them. They’re just as likely to kill each other as we are to kill them.”

              Warm lies back down beside him. The rain is coming hard now on the tent above them, in that ominous rising wave that signals the onslaught of the storm. Thunder rumbles somewhere south.

              He feels Morris turn onto his side, facing him. “You were telling me the other night about your—community of ideals,” he says, and Warm turns, too, so that there is little space between them, and in the darkening day he can see that Morris’ face is bluish and calm.

              “Yes.”

              “Will you tell me more about it?”

              Warm smiles. “Does it interest you?”

              Morris looks, for a moment, almost insulted. “Of course it does. That is where we are eventually headed, is it not?”

              “If all goes well. If we aren’t discovered.”

              “Well, then.” Morris folds an arm beneath his head. “Will you tell me?”

              “What shall I tell you?”

              Morris shrugs. “Anything you like,” he says. “Anything there is.”

 

* * *

 

 

              V.

              “Well,” says Warm, “at least she had the courtesy not to laugh in my face.”

              They are sitting in a dark and smoky corner of Mayfield’s inn, out of reach of the lanterns and candles, and Morris is picking delicately at his food, his eyes roving constantly across the noisy, crowded room beyond. He is more tense than Warm has seen him since Jacksonville, and as he was coming from Mayfield’s back room to join him, he caught a glimpse of Morris’ pistol, held ready underneath the table.

              “You’re probably better off,” Morris says. His leg is jittering occasionally next to Warm’s.

              Warm is trying not to let it bother him too much—the fact that Mayfield wanted nothing to do with his formula, or what little he had told her of it. Morris had advised that he go in alone, as he was known to her in some capacity, and while Morris was of the strongly-held opinion that they should leave and sleep rough as soon as possible, Mayfield had offered to put Warm up for nearly nothing as a consolation prize, and the thought of a decent bed is clouding over any other thought in his mind. Morris is not drinking, and hardly eating. He is grinding his teeth so hard Warm fears they might crack.

              “You don’t like it here,” Warm says.

              Morris works his jaw. “I don’t like _her._ ”

              Warm follows his gaze, across the room, to see Mayfield at her staggering height, moving among her patrons with statuesque dignity. At intervals everywhere he sees rough-looking men in coonskin hats, glowering at everyone with equal menace. There is a cluster of whores near the staircase who are ignoring the two of them entirely.

              “Eli and Charlie Sisters are idiot children compared to her,” Morris mumbles, and Warm looks at him in astonishment. Morris does not take his eyes off her. “Believe me, the moment you became worth more to her dead than alive, she’d slit your throat.”

              “You know her, then?”

              “By reputation.”

              “I thought she was very polite.” Warm watches her; she catches his eye and gives him a generous smile, and then moves on. Morris’ leg begins jittering again. “But I suppose you know more about these things than I do.”

              “Hermann,” says Morris, tightly, “I would be infinitely more comfortable if we left as soon as possible.”

              Warm leans across the table, just a little, so that he can speak low. “She hardly knows anything about it,” he says. Morris’ eyes shift to him. “Not nearly as much as the Commodore does. In all likelihood she thinks I’m mad, and I clearly don’t have any money worth robbing me for.”

              “I hope you are right,” Morris says.

              They go upstairs before the ruckus of the evening truly starts, as music is beginning among the tables and chairs, and Morris keeps his head down, his hat over his brow. Warm can feel someone’s eyes on them all the way up, but dares not look back to see whether or not it is Mayfield.

              When they find their room—pitiful, and clearly more suited to quick encounters with whores than spending a restful night—Morris closes the door and wedges a chair beneath the knob.

              “Surely that’s not necessary,” Warm says. He glances about—the walls are flimsy and thin, and the tick mattress sags ominously between the slats in the iron frame. Only the one. Mayfield either does not know that they are traveling together or does not care. There is a guttering kerosene lamp on the rickety side table and a faint draft coming in through the crooked-up windowframe.

              Morris takes off his hat, fusses with his hair. “You would think,” he says, with enough humor so as not to be condescending, “that after me, you’d have learned not to be so trusting, Hermann.”

              He drops his hat onto one of the posts of the bed and sits down on the mattress, grimacing as his weight sends a screech through the frame.

              “But,” says Warm, touching a finger to the side of his nose, “I was _right_ to trust you in the end, wasn’t I?” He grins, and Morris scoffs, eyes rolling, incredulous. His gold tooth catches the kerosene light for an instant.

              “I adore you,” he says, exasperated, “but how you’ve managed to survive this long is beyond me.”

              It’s not too late in the evening, but already Warm feels a weariness descending on him, the effect, perhaps, of this relatively quiet room, the closed door, the pleasant draft, the presence of the bed. Anything, at this point, seems more comfortable to him than their Mackinaw blankets. He hangs his bag carefully around the bedpost, and balances his bowler amusingly on top of Morris’ hat. Morris is idly checking over his pistol, his hair falling occasionally in his eyes. He is very soft in the light.

              “Will you try and get some sleep tonight?” Warm says. He stands near the drafty window to undress, to feel the early summer breeze on his face for a minute. Outside the harmonic buzz of cicadas.

              Morris laughs. “We’re hardly in the place for it.”

              “John.” Warm rolls up his shirt and looks in vain for a place to put it, eyeing always the slope of Morris’ shoulders. “There’s a chair under the door. If someone needs to stay up and keep watch, I’ll do it.”

              Morris looks back at him over his shoulder, standing by the window in his long underwear. Warm feels no shyness around him anymore; his lingering gaze only fills him with buoyant light. He offers Warm a small, mollifying smile. “It’s nothing I haven’t done before.”

              “I know, believe me.” Warm peels back the quilt and looks down with faint distaste at the stained linens underneath. He swipes a hand across them. They are cool. He is thinking of the vague anxiety of the nights after Jacksonville during which Morris had sat apart from him, alert to the darkness, leaving him to sleep alone and uncomforted. “I wish you’d rest, though. We’re no use to one another exhausted.”

              “We’re of even less use dead,” says Morris, but he turns around and lifts his legs up onto the bed, to at least assume the position of rest. Warm clambers in next to him and slides his stocking feet under the quilt. It’s thin—barely anything.

              “We’ll leave early,” says Warm. He traces with his eyes the line of the kerosene lamp down Morris’ throat, past the collar of his shirt, down the creased front of his vest to the lazy motion of his fingers, playing along the barrel and grip of his gun in his lap. “Before dawn. We’ll be gone before she can do anything about it.”

              Morris nods.

              Warm lies down on the thin, worn-through pillow, and Morris leans over to turn down the lamp. The long, wavering shadows on the ceiling shrink and pull away, toward the wall.

              Downstairs, coming up through the floorboards, there is a muffled noise of music and stamping feet, but Warm is too tired for it to bother him. From down the hall the occasional peal of female laughter. A gunshot very distantly, past the buildings of Mayfield, past the mud track leading out. Beside him Morris, solid and comfortable, with his ankles crossed at the foot of the bed. Warm can hear the deep sound of his breathing, the nigh-imperceptible hush of his fingers toying across the metal of his pistol. Every so often he clears his throat. Warm closes his eyes. He rests the back of his hand against Morris’ thigh, and gives himself to sleeping.

              What wakes him up again, he isn’t sure—the sensation, in a dream, of falling from the sky, or a noise from downstairs—but when he does, the night is thickly laid outside, and Morris is lying with his back to him on the mattress, his legs folded in toward his chest. For a moment Warm blinks at his shape, still half-asleep. The shadow of the chair wedged beneath the doorknob is smeared across the wall. The kerosene lamp is burning a pale, bare purple.

              Warm sits up and bends over him, just enough to see that he is fast asleep, his eyelashes long and brown against his cheek, his gun loose and flat in his right hand. His breathing is steady. Warm can see his eyes roaming underneath their lids.

              The floor is cold under his feet, even in their socks, and he makes no noise as he comes round, to the other side of the bed, and kneels down soundlessly on the warped, splintered floorboards. Gently, Warm reaches up and lifts the pistol out of Morris’ hand, and settles down to sit on his heels. The iron bedframe digs cruelly into his shoulder, but he does not move.

              In his lap, the gun, dark and sleek, looks like some night creature, something sinister. He plays his thumb across the hammer but does not cock it. There is no sound from downstairs, no laughter from the hall.

              Warm reaches up to tuck a strand of Morris’ unruly hair behind his ear and Morris bursts awake with a start and a frantic hand, and Warm nearly drops the gun onto the floor, but catches it at the last minute. “I’m not asleep,” Morris sputters idiotically, and then he sees who has woken him, and sighs hard, covering his bloodshot eyes with one hand.

              Warm tries his best not to laugh. “Yes, you were. You were asleep,” he says. “Do you know how I know?”

              Morris doesn’t say anything. He pinches the bridge of his nose and groans.

              “Because you curl up on your side when you sleep,” says Warm. He reaches up to turn the lamp all the way down, watching the flame flatten out and die. The impression of its light remains, bluish, on his eyes, until the dark settles in again. “It’s sweet.”

              “I wasn’t asleep,” Morris protests, but his protestations are weak. He rolls over, tries to lean down and take his gun back, but Warm holds it out of reach.

              “I’m perfectly capable of firing a pistol,” he says. “Go back to sleep, John.”

              “Hermann,” Morris says, as if in warning.

              “If I can hold you at gunpoint with this, I can hold just about anybody. I won’t hear it from you, Morris. Go back to sleep.”

              For a long time, Morris doesn’t say anything, and Warm looks down at the pistol, waiting for his next retort, but when he looks up again Morris’ eyes are closed, his lips parted, as if he had been on the verge of saying something, but had fallen off mid-thought. Poor fool, Warm thinks, with tenderness. Hasn’t slept on a frame bed since Oregon.

              The breeze through the drafty window has stilled. The cicadas are not singing anymore. Downstairs, soft footsteps; but Warm isn’t afraid. He sits on the floor with the gun.

              He lays his head down on the edge of the mattress, close enough almost to feel Morris’ lashes against his forehead, where he can hear Morris breathing against the tick. He could fall asleep himself quite comfortably here, but there is something nice in being the one to keep watch for Morris, for a change. Even if the protection is only rhetorical. An even exchange of some kind. An expression of gratitude.

He has never thanked Morris, he realizes, for any of it.

He resolves to do it tomorrow, once they have left Mayfield, and are back on their steady course southwest toward San Francisco. He’ll thank him for his bad-hipped mare, and for Jacksonville, and for kissing him so kindly.

He stays like that, on the floor, until the sky through the window errs grey, and he reaches gently up to wake Morris once again.

 

* * *

 

 

VI.

It occurs to him only when they have reached it that he has never seen the sea.

They are five days out of Mayfield when they come to it, and Morris sees it first, though they anticipate it is coming for miles. Warm recognizes the smell of its salt in some deep instinctual way, as if his bones know it. The parched ground gives way, by degrees, to soft, difficult sand, through which his horse struggles, trampling tufts of long-stranded grass.

Morris whistles back to him from the top of a hard-packed dune, and Warm urges the mare on under his breath until she clambers up it, snorting and huffing all the way. Near the top she stops short and refuses to go on, so he swings down off of her and clambers his way up the remainder of the distance, his feet sinking deep in the sand.

For a moment, he doesn’t know what to say. Far down below the beach rushes out and under and into the grey breaking waves, rolling one on top of the other with a thunderous noise, endless. He sees the white specks of shells being tumbled up and sucked back out, the wet sand glimmering in the pale sun overhead. Further from the shore the water, slate blue, stretches as far as he can see, in every direction. Long-winged birds circle, keening, overhead, and he watches their lazy circumnavigations, watches them dive occasionally and rocket back up, like stones skipped on the surface. He is seized with a sudden need to be in it, to feel it on his feet and his ankles and his legs.

He looks up, and sees that Morris, from atop his horse, is gazing out at it with wide, familiar fondness. He must have seen it many times before, Warm thinks. Maybe a hundred times. He wants to stand in the waves with Morris and hear all about it. When he catches Morris staring out with awe at something wonderful, a cliff face or a lovely stretch of plainland, a winding stream or a cave in the mountainside, Warm thinks his heart might burst.

It is not easy going for the horses on the beach, but they ride down anyway, at a slow walk near the waves, so that Warm can get a better look. After only a little while he can’t stand it anymore, comes down off his mare again and hands her reins off to Morris, so that he can lift fragile white shells from the sand, dust them off with his fingertips. Pick up, with sticks, the long dark tangles of kelp washed up on shore. He finds a bit of glass, worn smooth, blue, and puts it in his pocket. He drapes his black coat across the mare’s saddle and rolls up his sleeves and takes off his boots and Morris watches as he takes a few steps into the sea, struck dumb by the unexpected cold, and stares down at the water rushing and sucking back and forth over his bare feet, burying them in sand and washing them clean again.

Eventually he becomes aware that Morris has joined him, his hat pulled low against the hot, searing sun. His hands are clasped behind his back and he looks out, appearing for all the world a respectful gentleman in some drawing room or parlor, waiting for someone to say something to him at a party. It’s almost ridiculous. He must be smiling like a fool, because when Morris looks at him he furrows his quizzical brows and smiles back. Warm’s face is wet with spray and he can feel it curling his hair, sees it beginning to set in Morris’, too, and he can only imagine that they will both taste of salt at the end of the day, and how lovely it will be.

Through the afternoon they ride at an easy pace across the high, solid dunes, keeping the ocean on their right. To the east it seems the entire world stretches back behind them, the miles over which they’ve traveled, somewhere back there the mountains they passed through, Mayfield and Jacksonville. In the days since Mayfield they have seen only three or four people and spoken to no one but each other. They have sat peaceably by the fire not speaking at all. They have spent the nights, quite shamelessly now, in one another’s arms, their foreheads together, or Warm’s face laid against the back of Morris’ neck, or Morris asleep with his head on Warm’s chest, soothed, perhaps, by the rhythm of his heartbeat. What shame would there be in it, in any case? Warm cannot think of any. Morris, who touches him as if to confirm that he is real—and with a vague wonder, as if he cannot believe he is allowed to. Morris, intelligent and alert, wry and tender; how else on earth could they be? He has the sense, again, the sure-footed feeling, that they are deeply the same, have known each other all their lives, and could not now possibly exist apart.

After supper at their camp just over the hill from the sea, after the horses have been hobbled and fed for the night, as the stars are coming out in force overhead and Warm’s breathing has slowed to move in time with the sound of the tide, he watches Morris duck inside the sole tent they’ve put up and disappear, and sits for a while longer with his tin mug of coffee in his hands, gazing into the fire.

In the dark, the horses make soft noises. The sea rolls like a whisper.

In the tent, Morris is sitting on his bedroll with his journal, writing something by the light of the lantern. He looks up when Warm comes in, the acrid smoke of the dampened fire following at his heels.

Warm sits down beside him, his knees up, arms locked around them, and watches him for a spell. He can’t make out exactly what he’s writing. The pencil loops and curls across the page.

He kisses Morris’ throat, and Morris smiles, but does not stop writing. He does not stop after the second kiss, or the third, either. At the joint of his jaw Morris smells of perfume and salt.

“Let’s lie down,” Warm says, with every meaning.

“Alright,” says Morris, but he finishes his entry all the same, his eyes hooded, his concentration unbroken. Finally, after what feels like hours, he stops, lays down the ribbon in the binding to mark his place, and sets the journal carefully on the folding table, and then his mouth is on Warm’s, and on Warm’s cheek, his jaw, his throat. Both his big, rough hands are laid against Warm’s neck, underneath the open collar of his shirt. Morris rests his cheek on Warm’s, and Warm knows what he wants—he’s asked for it before, underneath that boulder in the river out of Jacksonville—Morris is tugging very gently at Warm’s shirt where it is tucked into his trousers, and Warm reaches down to help him pull it up and off, sets to work on the buttons of his long underwear while Morris undoes his own vest, his own shirt, the belt at his hips.

It’s clumsy—neither of them want to stand and leave the other on the ground. Warm pulls the neck of his underwear down over his shoulders, squirming backward out of his trousers, and Morris pulls on them helpfully, his chest bare now, his skin illumined orange from behind. The dusting of freckles across his shoulders is darling.

When Warm is naked he lies back, looking up toward the slanted ceiling of the tent over them, the line that holds its peak, the canvas seeming to breathe with the wind from the sea. He can still smell it, even here.

Morris is very quiet.

Warm closes his eyes. Every part of him feels flushed and hot. He is aware, keenly, of being looked at. It unnerves him until he reminds himself that it is Morris who is looking. Morris, who he trusts. Morris who adores him.

In the river, weeks ago, Morris had asked almost shyly just to look at him. Warm, seeing no harm, had let him. He’d stood underneath the jutting boulder with his hands clasped demurely behind his back and let Morris look. He’d watched the color rise in Morris’ face. Morris had kissed him after, with immeasurable feeling. They had still been figuring all of it out then, learning the colors and angles of their understanding, trying each new intimacy with the halting curiosity of children, too polite or infatuated to ask too much of one another. It wasn’t ever so much fragile, Warm thinks now, as it was merely delicate, like the myriad gossamer tangles of a fishing net.

He feels Morris touch him—wondering fingertips grazing his collarbone—and settles deeper into the earth beneath him, a curious shiver starting in his spine. He feels Morris lean down over him to kiss his throat again, sweep his hands across Warm’s sides, his hips, his flanks, his thighs. His palm drawn down across the dark hair of Warm’s chest, his belly; his lips resting delicately on a nipple, almost embarrassed. Warm tries not to move. He feels Morris’ hands between his legs, moving them gently apart. Morris kisses the taut plane of flesh between Warm’s leg and his hip, and then, for a moment, he rests there, and Warm can feel his breath against the coarse black hair between his legs, and takes a stuttering inhale—he feels hot all over, feels himself beginning to harden, knows that Morris is feeling it too.

He reaches down, eyes still closed, and finds Morris’ head with his hands. Morris presses his lips to Warm’s stomach and he hears fabric rustling, and then Morris is flush atop of him, kissing him full but gently, sweetly, cupping Warm’s face in his hands. His knee between Warm’s legs, and Warm feels his growing hardness against his thigh and longs to touch him, make him feel, if only in part, the ecstatic lightness he himself is feeling now.

“Warm,” says Morris, and Warm draws his head down against his shoulder, kisses absently at his throat, his shoulder, running a hand flat across the expanse of his back.

For a while they rest there like that, and Warm thinks he could almost leave it here and be done with it, content just to hold Morris to him, breathe his smell, feel the weight of his body on top of him, the well-muscled flats and slopes of him. Morris shifts, and Warm feels him, heavy and hard, between them, and his hips rise a little, involuntarily, and Morris turns his face toward his neck.

“Warm,” he says again. Warm opens his legs a little more, his head tipped back. He feels Morris’ hand searching down between their bodies. The touch of his hand sends a wave of shudders through him. He wants to kiss him until neither of them can breathe. It is tortuous. “Warm,” Morris says again, and there is something aching and intimate in it, more intimate even than _Hermann._ “Morris,” says Warm, and holds his face up in his hands and looks into it.

Morris, who is quiet by nature, is quiet now, too, as if embarrassed to let sound carry from his mouth. He breathes low in his throat instead, his hand clumsy but pleasant, the catch and drag of his calloused palm on Warm’s sensitive flesh; Warm wraps one leg around the back of Morris’ thigh, to push up closer to him, unable, he thinks, to ever get as close as he wants.

Morris leans back, out of reach of Warm’s fond mouth, and Warm feels his exploring hand further down between his legs, in newer, different places, and Warm swallows a sound at the curious brush of his fingers, the press of his thumb, the kneading grip on his flank. He reaches for him and coaxes him back down, back to the hot, wonderful pressure of their bodies together, the muscles in his thighs trembling with the effort of keeping them open.

Still Morris’ hands explore, stroking him, roving, and Warm presses his own hands to Morris’ chest, his breath coming shorter now, his toes curling. Again Morris leans back, and again Warm tries to pull him down, but now Morris is occupied, his brows furrowed. Warm wonders what on earth he is doing and sits up, wrapping his arms around Morris’ neck, wanting only to kiss him, and damn the rest. He eases up into Morris’ lap and Morris sits down heavily under his weight, unfolding his legs, until Warm is slotted nicely there in the crook of his hips and thighs, looking down at him now, at the perfect angle to rest their heads together.

He does, and closes his eyes, and Morris does, too, his exploring forgotten for a moment; his hands are resting on Warm’s hips, as if to anchor him where he sits. They are both hard against their bellies, and when Warm leans forward just a bit Morris makes a pleasant sound, and he does it again, wants to hear it again. Morris grips a handful of the flesh of his hind and suddenly slows, stills.

“Hermann,” he whispers, with a hint of mortification.

“Hm?”

“Hermann,” he says, “I have absolutely no idea what comes next.”

In this moment, it is the most absurd thing Warm has ever heard.

He begins to laugh—he cannot help it—he drops his head against Morris’ shoulder, his shoulders shaking, and after a moment of surprise Morris begins to laugh, too—his arms wrap tight around Warm’s body and he goes backward, pulling Warm on top of him, their knees all at angles, the both of them utterly ridiculous—naked, beaded with new sweat, in a cramped canvas tent by the sea—they look at each other and only laugh harder; after a moment Warm rolls away from him and they lie side by side, stupid with it, both giddy and somehow relieved. Their bodies pressed together are hot and buzzing and electric, as if there is lightning thrumming through them, and Warm seeks out Morris’ hand with his, twines their fingers tightly together on the Mackinaw blanket between them.

And Morris, after it has shaken out of them, still chuckling breathlessly, turns and takes hold of Warm’s hip, pulls him forward again; he kisses him, kisses the last reedy laugh out of his mouth, and this time Warm takes them both in his hand at once, and slots his leg between Morris’ knees, rocks into it, and Morris reaches down to cover his hand with his own; the pressure of their thighs together, their chests, Warm’s forearm flat against Morris’ side, all of it, the distant roar of the breakers, the night wind in the canvas, the thought of the gold glistening in Morris’ tooth and the bank of a river somewhere, the thought of this embrace repeating, over and over, Morris and his gentle smile, Morris who adores him—it all clouds together at the front of Warm’s skull, a rush in his ears, until he comes with a startled noise over their hands.

His mouth opens, and his eyes close, his toes curling and his thighs trembling, and Morris breathes out long and hard against his lips and Warm feels their hands growing sticky, wet, and presses in as close to Morris as he can, crushing their hands between them, burying his face in his hot, damp neck, something fluttering deep inside his chest.

They lie there like that for a little while, spent and breathing hard.

Warm feels a droplet of sweat rolling cool down his face.

Morris’ hand, shaking a little, but slow and steady, running up and down his back, to soothe him.

* * *

 

 

 

 

* * *

 

VII.

They are two days out from San Francisco, from the claims office and the project bank, from the crush of the city and its people, and beyond it Warm does not know where they will go.

There is Dallas, of course. But between here and Dallas a million little obstacles, a hundred little things to worry about.

They could retrace their steps north, to join the mad dash to the American River—or even further, closer to the Oregon Territory border. If there is no luck in San Francisco, there are other cities, other rivers.

He has a sense, ridiculous though it may be, that everything will turn out alright.

And even if it does all go wrong, he thinks—and it certainly might—even if it all goes wrong, there will be some peace in it, given them by everything good and kind that has come before.

Beside him on his horse Morris is keeping a resolute eye on the trail ahead. He is humming, occasionally, snatches of the old, anchored song Warm had heard once on the mountainside, and lost hold of in the trees.

 

             

 

             

             

             

             

             

             

             

 

 

             


End file.
